Anarchism

New Dictionary of the History of Ideas
COPYRIGHT 2005 The Gale Group, Inc.

ANARCHISM.

The term anarchy comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "without a leader or ruler." However, proponents of anarchism have most often used the term to refer to a natural state of society in which people are not governed by submission to human-made laws or to any external authority. Anarchism is above all a moral doctrine concerned with maximizing the personal freedom of individuals in society. To achieve this end, leading anarchist social theorists have tended to offer critical analyses of (1) the state and its institutional framework; (2) economics; and (3) religion. Anarchist hostility to the state is reflected in the rejection of the view popularized by contract theorists that a government's sovereignty is legitimated by the consent of its subjects. Anarchists contend that no contractual arrangement among human beings justifies the establishment of a ruling body (government) that subordinates individuals to its authority. From their observations of the historical development of the state, anarchist thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) concluded that all forms of government have been used as instruments for establishing monopolies that favor the propertied and privileged. Anarchists also argue that the all-encompassing authority of the state allows it to exercise undue influence over the lives of its citizens. It is further maintained by anarchists that the state, using laws and the organs of power at its disposal, can control not only citizens' public and private behavior but also their economic lives. As such, the state, in all its forms, is condemned as an unnecessary evil.

From an economic standpoint, most anarchists have identified themselves as members of the anticapitalist socialist movement. In common with socialists, anarchists see capitalism as a system ruled by elites, one that exploits the working or productive members of society economically and represses them culturally and spiritually. Accordingly, anarchists argue
that the emancipation of the worker will only be achieved by completely destroying the pillars of capitalism.

Anarchists differ as to what form of economic arrangements should replace capitalism. Collectivists and mutualists insist that private ownership of the fruits of individuals' labor is desirable, while anarchist communists maintain that individual freedom can only be achieved in a society where all material goods and natural resources are placed under common ownership. Still another group of anarchists known as individualists have advocated a system of "labor for labor" exchange, which they believe could operate in accordance with natural market forces.

Anticlericalism is another important dimension of anarchist thinking. Though most anarchists are materialists, they are not opposed to spirituality per se: indeed anarcho-pacifists such as Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) were self-identified as Christians. Rather, anarchists condemn organized religion, which they see as an agent of cultural repression. They have, for example, attacked the Catholic Church among other religious institutions on the grounds that it has historically served as a means of empowering church government and not of enriching the spiritual lives of its adherents. Anarchists further contend that the church has consistently acted as an ally of secular governments and therefore forms part of the general system of state repression that operates against the common person.

Because the heyday of anarchism as an ideological movement was during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the focus here will be on the core beliefs of key anarchist theorists in this period. Thus a discussion of other, less historically significant anarchist strands such as pacifism and individualism will be mentioned only in passing. The impact that classical anarchist theory has had on recent political and social movements will be summarized in the concluding section.

Anarchist Principles in Context

The ideas associated with modern anarchism can be traced to the period of the French Revolution (1789–1799), although they did not crystallize into a formal political doctrine until the middle part of the nineteenth century. The first book that offered the clearest intimation of the anarchist conception of society was William Godwin's An Enquiry concerning Political Justice and Its Influence upon General Virtue and Happiness (London, 1793). In this, Godwin identifies the state as the main source of all social ills. In order for humans to live freely and harmoniously, Godwin advocates the establishment of a stateless society in which individuals are no longer subject to the economic exploitation of others. Despite its antistatist message, the ideas found in Godwin's magnum opus belong to a tradition of British political radicalism that cannot be classified as anarchist. In fact his work had its greatest influence on the liberal thinkers of his age as well as on Robert Owen, John Gray, and other early socialist reformers.

Of far greater significance to the development of modern anarchist ideology is the French social philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose indictment of private property under capitalism was made famous in his book What is Property? (1840). Proudhon's main contributions to the anarchist view of society lay in his theories of mutualism and federalism. In the former he argued that the exploitative capitalist system could be undermined by creating economic organizations such as the People's Bank, an institution of mutual credit meant to restore the equilibrium between what individuals produce and what they consume. Because he believed that concentrating political power in the hands of the state militated against the economic forms he was proposing, Proudhon argued for a society in which power radiated from the bottom upward and was distributed along federal or regional lines.

Though he himself never belonged to any party or political organization, Proudhon's writings inspired a substantial following among freethinkers, liberal intellectuals, and workers across Europe, particularly in France and Spain. One of his most famous disciples was the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Like Proudhon, Bakunin was an eclectic thinker who was constantly revising and reformulating his views on society. More so than Proudhon, who did not believe that the transition to an anarchist society demanded violent and sweeping changes, Bakunin gave both physical and ideological expression to the view that revolutionary upheaval was a necessary and unavoidable process of social development, a view summed up in his oft-quoted dictum, "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge." At the core of his creed was collectivism, by which he meant that the land and means of production should be collectively owned and that future society should be organized around voluntary associations—such as peasant communes or trade unions—that were not regulated or controlled by any form of government. Too impatient to set forth a systematic exegesis of his antiauthoritarian beliefs, Bakunin tended to express his concepts in tracts that could be used by revolutionary bodies (for example, the Alliance of Social Democracy) with which he was associated. Indeed Bakunin's most enduring legacy to anarchism resides in his conception of revolutionary transformation. According to him, the dispossessed and most repressed elements of society—particularly the working classes and peasantry in economically backward countries such as Spain, Italy, and Russia—were by nature revolutionary and only needed proper leadership to rise up against their oppressors. Because he adamantly rejected the Marxian notion that conquering political power was a precondition for overthrowing capitalism, Bakunin was convinced that the exploited masses should be led into revolt by a small and dedicated group of individuals who were acting in their interests. It was his belief that revolution could not be achieved until the state was completely abolished, which brought him into conflict with Karl Marx and his followers, who insisted that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" was a necessary phase in the transition to a stateless society (communism).

Bakunin's antipolitical conception of revolutionary change as well as his forceful repudiation of the authoritarian communist principles embodied in the Marxism of his day drove a wedge between his adherents in the First International (1864–1876) and those of Karl Marx, thus establishing a divide in the European socialist movement that would never be bridged.

However, not all anarchists were hostile toward the idea of communism. Another Russian aristocrat turned revolutionary, Peter Kropotkin, developed over the course of his lifetime a sociological theory of anarchism that combined the antiauthoritarian beliefs espoused by his predecessors in the anarchist movement with those of communism. Unlike Proudhon and Bakunin, both of whom believed in the right of individual possession of products produced from one's labor, Kropotkin advocated an economic system based on the communal ownership of all goods and services that operated on the socialist principle "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." By distributing society's wealth and resources in this way, Kropotkin and other anarchist communists believed that everyone, including those who were unproductive, would be able to live in relative abundance.

Kropotkin's greatest contributions to anarchist theory, however, were his attempts to present anarchism as an empirically verifiable worldview, one that was based on "a mechanical explanation of world phenomena, embracing the whole of nature." Following in the positivist tradition laid down by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), and other forerunners of modern social science, Kropotkin believed that the study of society was analogous to that of the world of nature. In Modern Science and Anarchism (1912), for example, Kropotkin contends that the anarchist method of sociological enquiry is that of the exact natural sciences. "Its aim," he says, "is to construct a synthetic philosophy comprehending in one generalization all the phenomena of nature—and therefore also the life of societies." In developing his views on human nature, Kropotkin went farther in extending the analogy between society and the natural world. Like the Social Darwinists of his era, Kropotkin maintained that all human behavior was a reflection of our biological condition. But while most Social Darwinists argued that a "tooth and nail" impulse in the struggle for existence was the dominant natural law governing the evolution of human behavior, Kropotkin insisted that the instinct of cooperation was an even more important factor in this process. According to him, it is the species in nature that shows the greatest tendency toward mutual aid—not cutthroat competition—that is the one most likely to survive and flourish over time. By arguing in this way, Kropotkin was attempting to demonstrate that anarchism was a highly evolved state of human nature but one that could not be obtained until the state and other coercive institutions were completely abolished.

The relationship between anarchism and violence.

The efforts of Kropotkin and other anarchist thinkers to define anarchism as a rational and practicable doctrine were overshadowed by the negative publicity generated by the violence-prone elements of the movement. Beginning with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 and continuing up to the turn of the century, when the American president William McKinley was murdered in 1901 by a lone gunman, anarchists everywhere were viewed as sociopaths who terrorized society by throwing bombs and assassinating heads of state. The fact that not all of these public outrages were committed by anarchists (Alexander II was killed by nihilists) or individuals who were representative of the movement as a whole did little to dispel the exceedingly negative image of anarchists that was being projected by the popular press and government authorities.

The violent practices that were now associated with anarchism were largely the product of an ill-defined tactic known as "propaganda by the deed," a direct-action policy advocated by some anarchists from the late 1870s on. That violent and even criminal deeds were necessary to advance the anarchist movement appealed especially to a small number of disaffected idealists who were convinced that the only way to intimidate the ruling classes and overturn the capitalist system was to disrupt the daily routines of bourgeois society. Killing public figures close to the centers of political and religious power was one way of doing this. Bombing cafés, robbing banks, and destroying churches and similar hierarchical institutions were also seen as justifiable means to a revolutionary end.

A number of the perpetrators of "propaganda by the deed" were influenced by a highly individualistic strain of anarchist thought that became popular among déclassé intellectuals and artists around the turn of the twentieth century. A seminal figure in the individualist branch of anarchist thinking was the German philosopher Max Stirner (1806–1856). In his The Ego and His Own (1845), Stirner espoused a philosophy that was premised on the belief that all freedom is essentially derived from self-liberation. Because he identified the "ego" or "self" as the sole moral compass of humankind, he condemned government, religion, and any other formal institution that threatened one's personal freedom. It was his abiding concern with the individual's uniqueness and not his views as a social reformer that made Stirner attractive to certain segments of the anarchist community at the end of the nineteenth century. This was particularly true not just of the devotees of violence in Europe but also of the nonrevolutionary individualist anarchists in the United States. For example, the foremost representative of this strand of anarchism in the United States, Benjamin R. Tucker (1854–1939), took from Stirner's philosophy the view that self-interest or egoistic desire was needed to preserve the "sovereignty of the individual."

Spiritual anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Parallel to the terrorist acts committed at this time, the Christian pacifist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was developing an antiauthoritarian current of thinking that, in its broadest sense, can be regarded as belonging to the anarchist tradition. Tolstoy promoted a form of religious anarchism that was based on the "law of supreme love" as defined by his personal (anti-doctrinal) reading of the Scriptures. Though he did not see himself as an anarchist, he nevertheless believed that in order for men and women to live in a morally coherent world it was necessary to destroy the state and its institutions. Because of his rejection of the use of force and violence, Tolstoy and his followers advocated civil disobedience, or nonviolent resistance, as a means of achieving the stateless and communally based society they envisioned.

It was also around this time that anarchist doctrine experienced another significant metamorphosis. From the late 1890s until the 1930s, anarchist activity was increasingly centered in working-class cultural and economic organizations,
and the tactics and strategy of the movement were grounded in the theory of revolutionary syndicalism. While not wholly abandoning the use of violence, the anarcho-syndicalists believed that, against the organized forces of big government and monopoly capitalism, the revolutionary élan of the workers could be most effectively channeled through trade union organizations. Using tactics such as the general strike, which was meant to paralyze the economy by linking shutdowns in different industries, the anarcho-syndicalists believed that it would be possible to create the general conditions for a complete collapse of capitalism and the state. Anarcho-syndicalism became an important force in the labor movements in parts of Latin America (Mexico, Argentina) and in European countries such as Italy, France, and Spain. Its greatest impact was felt in Spain. During the Second Republic (1931–1936) and continuing through the civil war period (1936–1939), anarchosyndicalism developed into a powerful mass movement. At its peak the anarcho-syndicalist organizations known as the CNTFAI (National Confederation of Workers and Federation of Iberian Anarchists) counted more than 1.5 million adherents. Their influence over the course of events during the civil war was most dramatically illustrated by the fact that they set up and ran thousands of industrial and agricultural collectives throughout the Republican zone. The triumph of Franco's Nationalist forces in 1939, followed by the outbreak of another global world war that same year, sounded the death knell for anarcho-syndicalism not only in Spain but in other Western European countries as well.

It deserves mention here that, by the time World War II began, anarchism's reach extended across the globe. Besides taking root in the Americas, the doctrine had penetrated parts of East Asia and even the subcontinent. In both China and Japan, for example, Western anarchist ideas influenced leading social thinkers such as Mao Zedong and labor organizers who were seeking to establish socialism in those countries. However, the emergence of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of both the right and left in the 1930s and late 1940s effectively quashed the libertarian tendencies that had been developing up to then. It would take another forty years before anarchist ideas would be resurrected by tiny protest groups (mostly in Japan) that wanted to express their cultural and intellectual dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Contemporary Anarchism

While the Spanish Civil War, World War II (1939–1945), and the rise of totalitarian communist regimes after 1949 were events that effectively ended the further development of the historical anarchist movement, anarchist ideas and sensibilities were not as easily repressed. The political and cultural protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Europe and the Americas saw a resurgence of interest in anarchism. Feminists, ecologists, student radicals, pacifists, and others who were eager to question the prevailing social and moral preconceptions of modern society held by both the left and the right were drawn above all to the doctrine's iconoclasm. At this time, elements from a variety of nonlibertarian groups—the Situationists in France, for example—freely borrowed anarchist ideas in developing their own ideological positions.

Anarchism has also been enriched by the thinking of some of the twentieth century's leading philosophers, political activists, artists, and intellectuals. Bertrand Russell, Herbert Read, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Buber, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, Paul Goodman, Lewis Mumford, and Noam Chomsky are among the notable figures who have been associated with anarchist beliefs and values.

From the late twentieth century on, anarchism has continued to branch out in different directions. Anarchist ideas have been influential in the development of radical feminism and the Green and antiglobalist movements that have spread across Europe and the Americas. Contemporary anarcho-feminism has its roots in the writings and activism of historically important figures like Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Federica Montseny. Goldman was among the first female anarchists to emphasize that the emancipation of women in society must begin with psychological change within women themselves. By calling on women to struggle against the repressive and hierarchical structures that dominated their personal lives, Goldman anticipated late-twentieth-century anarcho-feminists, who have insisted that the "personal is political" and have developed a radical critique of everyday life. Anarchist principles also have been adopted by some of the more radical ecological movements of postindustrial societies. Libertarian social ecologists such as Murray Bookchin have attempted to extend the traditional anarchist demand to emancipate society from government rule to our natural environment, calling for an end to human beings' dominating and exploitative relationship with nature.

Perhaps because of its shock value in an age crowded by political neologisms, the anarchist label has also been applied to groups that do not properly belong to the anarchist tradition. For example, the term "anarcho-capitalism" is sometimes used to refer to libertarian economic and social thinkers such as Ayn Rand, David Friedman, and other pro-capitalists who hold strong antistatist views. But even though they share the anarchist's contempt for state authority, their commitment to free enterprise and laissez-faire principles places them completely at odds with classical anarchist thinking and practice.

Ever since the Cold War ended in 1991, small groups of anarchists around the world have been in the forefront of the antiglobalization movement. Like their predecessors, modern anarchist activists seek to expose the adverse power relationships that affect our daily lives. They are particularly concerned with the impact that the global expansion of corporate leviathans has had on society, not least because of the seemingly unlimited ways in which this advanced form of capitalism can manipulate and control the lives of individuals. While a few anarchist groups still resort to direct-action methods to get their revolutionary message across, a growing number are turning to advanced technologies like the Internet to promote their cause. In short, whether one admires or abhors anarchist principles, it cannot be denied that anarchism offers a critical perspective of authority that appears to be endlessly relevant to those who want to sharpen their awareness of the boundaries of personal freedom.

De Cleyre, Voltairine. Anarchism and American Traditions.Chicago: n.p., 1932.

Goldman, Emma.. Anarchism, and Other Essays. 1910. Reprint, with a new introduction by Richard Drinnon, New York: Dover, 1969.

Goodman, Paul. Growing Up Absurd. New York: Random House, 1960.

Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. 1906. In The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings, edited by Marshall Shatz. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

———. Modern Science and Anarchism. Translated from the Russian by David A. Modell. Philadelphia: The Social Club of Philadelphia, 1903. 2nd ed., London: Freedom Press, 1923.

———. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. London: Heinemann, 1902.

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. What Is Property: An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government. 1890. Translated by Donald R. Kelley and Bonnie G. Smith. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

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Anarchism

Anarchism

Anarchism, like liberalism and democracy, carries more than a single connotation. This is because it has produced both a body of theoretical literature and a series of activist parties, the two only remotely related. The anarchism of Godwin, Proudhon, and Kropotkin, known to the scholarly community, stands at a far remove from the images of the Haymarket rioters, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Spanish Civil War, familiar to the popular mind. Yet if relationships must be established, it may be said that both the literary and the activist traditions share a common view of man, society, and the state.

Any definition of anarchism must be derived more from its literature than from its record of political action. Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President McKinley, and the Andalusian peasants who fought against Franco were probably stirred by the same impulses as were Godwin and Kropotkin. But the latter figures articulated their beliefs, and it is on the written work that we must rely. The major tenets of anarchist doctrine may be summarized under five major heads. Emphases may differ with different proponents, but most of the elements are at least implicit in all serious anarchist writings.

(1) Man is essentially a benign creature. He was born good, or with a potentiality for goodness, but has been corrupted by the habits and institutions of authority. Religion, education, politics, and economic life have all served to warp the natural goodness that inheres in mankind.

(2) Man is a social animal, and men reach their fulfillment when voluntarily and spontaneously cooperating with one another. Society is natural, the state is not; and the quest for the communal life is instinctive to all men.

(3) Prevailing institutions of society—particularly private property and the state—are artificial agencies through which men exploit and corrupt each other. Authority in any form, even democratic government or a socialist economy, stultifies the individual.

(4) Social change must be spontaneous, direct, and mass-based. Political parties, trade unions—indeed, all organized movements—are themselves creatures of authority. While pursuing reform or even revolution, they are so constituted as ultimately to replace one evil with another of a similar sort. Significant change, then, must express the natural sentiments of a mass of autonomous individuals acting without outside direction.

(5) Industrial civilization, no matter what the form of ownership of the means of production, warps the human spirit. Machines master men, narrowing their personalities and blocking creativity. Any society built on an industrial structure is bound to debase the motives and impulses of those who live in it.

The literature of anarchism. While elements of anarchist doctrine can be found as far back as the Stoics, the first meaningful exposition could not come until the advent of the industrial revolution. William Godwin’s Political Justice (1793), appearing in the first and grimmest generation of that revolution, attacked the exploitation of man by man resulting from tyrannical government and unequal ownership of property. It is interesting to note that Godwin did not exhort men to revolutionary action, but hoped rather that people would educate themselves to a realization that justice would be secured only if they replaced the state with a network of voluntary arrangements.

Far more widely read was Pierre Joseph Proudhon, whose What Is Property? (1840) gave the notorious reply that “property is theft.” Proudhon emphasized that society is a natural organism and the individual is a social creature. He, too, did not advocate revolutionary violence, but his call for the abolition of the state and the prevailing economic system implied that a forceful overturn was bound to come. Throughout his writings he elaborated many plans for setting up independent associations, decentralizing authority, and circumscribing the power of the state. The theoretical clash between anarchist and communist doctrine can be seen most vividly in Marx’s attack on Proudhon, one of those rare cases where Marx displayed respect for the arguments of an antagonist.

Perhaps the most attractive of anarchist authors was P’etr Kropotkin, whose Mutual Aid (1890–1896) sought to rebut social Darwinism. Nature does not live under laws that permit only the fittest to survive, Kropotkin argued; not only in primitive societies, but also in the animal world, the basis of organization is mutual cooperation and help. With this “scientific” underpinning he proceeded to call for a thoroughgoing communist society, based on communes and devoid of either a division of labor or a money economy. He was explicit in advocating removal of the state by revolutionary means, but he was a “pure” anarchist in that he rejected any organized movement or party as the vehicle of change.

Of the major anarchist writers, Georges Sorel seemed least concerned with the goodness of man or the question of individual freedom. His Reflections on Violence (1908) is closest to the popular image of an anarchist handbook, detailing the various methods by which the working class can undermine and overthrow the capitalist state. The chief weapon is the “general strike,” a rising of the proletariat that brings the wheels of the old order to a precipitous halt. Sorel was prepared to use existing trade unions as the vehicle for revolution, giving rise to the term “anarchosyndicalism.” In making such a concession, he was, unlike Kropotkin, willing to use at least one institutional mechanism of the old regime to bridge the gap to the new society.

Anarchism as utopianism. It is easy enough to see how anarchism has remained a sectarian doctrine. Its tenets, taken singly, have much in common with those of other ideologies. Anarchism shares with liberalism an exaltation of the individual, a rejection of authority, and assumes a natural harmony of interests in society. Like both socialism and communism, it abjures private property and a state that supports the capitalist system; its stress on the need for revolutionary change clearly parallels the communist prescription. Anarchism has a democratic strand in its emphasis on human equality, and it is also in the classical conservative tradition in its suspicion of industrial society. Yet anarchism is the sum of its several parts, and the whole recipe is too rich a mixture for most. Those who rebel against authority may be attracted by parts of the anarchist creed; however, all but a handful balk when they learn that the entire doctrine must be regarded as an interlocking edifice.

Quite plainly, anarchists wish to have it all ways at once. If foremost priority is apparently accorded to the free and uncoerced individual, equal value is assigned to the harmonious social organism. Revolutionary violence is advocated, or at least implied, but unlike the communist variety it is to come to pass without benefit of a hierarchical party or leaders who impose their will on an organized movement. And the society of the postrevolutionary epoch, unlike any the modern world has ever known, will exist without law, state, or authority and will witness the flowering of hitherto unknown human potentialities.

Anarchism must be understood as a variety of utopianism—although differing from other Utopian thought in that it considers not only ends but also means to the achievement of those ends. Like all utopianism, it is at least partly an attitude of mind rather than a rigorous theory. There is no difficulty in finding instances of ingenuousness in anarchist doctrine. It is easy enough to point out that coercion, real or threatened, is a necessary element in human relations; that revolutionary action can lead to dictatorial tyranny no less than to the promised land; that man has a propensity for evil as well as for good; that the anarchist Utopia will be a monotonous plateau. But none of these objections, all based on common sense, attack the basic impulse that gives rise to the anarchist protest.

Anarchism, like any Utopian doctrine, is first a critique of existing social arrangements, and second a blueprint for a problemless future. The principle that man is naturally good, for example, cannot be undermined by allusion to the evil behavior that has recurred throughout human history. For the reply is simply that man has never been given the chance to realize his potential, that his benign nature has heretofore been corrupted by institutional authority. Nor, by the same token, can the drabness of an equalitarian and conflictless society be used as a stick with which to beat Utopian projections. To say that we, the corrupted products of an immoral era, would be bored is a myopic judgment on the conditions of society best conducive to the highest development of the human spirit. If anarchism is Utopian, if its analysis and prescriptions seem unsophisticated, it nevertheless represents one of the fundamental expressions of dissatisfaction with the way men have chosen to order their lives up to the present.

Anarchism in the modern world. It is tempting to say that there is a little of the anarchist in everyone. Most individuals are sufficiently unquestioning to accept authority, at least as a necessary evil. But there is hardly a person who has not, perhaps in one moment of his life, stopped to wonder what he might have made of himself if agencies of coercion had not restricted his behavior at every turn. The businessman objecting to government intervention in his affairs, the factory worker resentful of the discipline imposed by management, the citizen who feels powerless in the face of party machines, even the adolescent chafing under regulations laid down by school authorities—all yearn for the freedom to be and to become themselves. To be sure, much of what sometimes passes as the spirit of anarchism is simply rationalization for a style of life an individual or group wishes to attain or preserve.

A good deal of the renewed interest in “alienation,” “anomie,” and personal “identity” stems from the assumption that men seek to be free of restrictions and are thwarted in their quest by the impersonal rules and personal relationships arising in the modern world. Critiques of corporations, trade unions, political parties, and even suburban life seem at first glance to reflect the anarchist temper. But in the final analysis it would be a grave error to confuse this social criticism with the anarchist tradition. For above all else the anarchist stands outside his society. He has no vested interests in it, and he is prepared to witness its destruction. The businessman, the politician, the intellectual, all of these may want the world shaped somewhat differently, but they still wish to preserve what are for them critical elements of that world. Few are so dedicated to freedom that they reject out of hand all organized forms of action and wait instead for the day when spontaneous and leaderless uprisings overthrow the social structure.

There may be concern with the kinds of problems that constitute anarchist doctrine, but there is a shortage of actual anarchists. This has been the case throughout history. Dedicated believers arise from time to time to assassinate princes and presidents, to encourage labor unrest, and to man a barricade in a civil war. But if states and economies have been overturned by revolutionary means, it has been by other movements acting under other inspirations.

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Anarchism

West's Encyclopedia of American Law
COPYRIGHT 2005 The Gale Group, Inc.

ANARCHISM

The theory espousing a societal state in which there is no structured government or law or in which there is resistance to all current forms of government.

Anarchists promote the absence of rules, which leads to the absence of any identifiable social structure beyond that of personal autonomy. When anarchy becomes defined by one anarchist, other anarchists may feel bound to change it.

Anarchism thus means different things to different believers. Anarchists do not hold common views on subjects such as desirable levels of community cooperation and the role of large industry in society. Another matter of continuing debate is whether anarchy is an end unto itself or simply the best means to a better government. To all anarchists, though, anarchy is the best refuge from political dogma and authority. Moreover, many anarchists agree that anarchism begins with the notion that people are inherently good, or even perfect, and that external authority—laws, governments, institutions, and so forth—limits human potential. External authority, they suggest, brings a corruption of the innocent human spirit and a ceiling on achievement.

Commentators on anarchism differentiate between "classical" theories of anarchy and more modern movements. Classical anarchists focused more heavily on the opposition to state control and capitalist society. Their strongest opposition was directed at government and the church. Many of the early anarchists were essentially socialists, and anarchist theories played a significant part in the socialist movements during the early twentieth century.

Beginning in about the 1960s, anarchism shifted its focus to a more general opposition to public and private hierarchy and domination of the working class. Modern anarchists tend to focus upon such issues as those related to patriarchy, racism, nature, and technology, and the effects these concepts have on society. One camp of anarchist theorists advocates a theory of anarcho-syndicalism, and those that subscribe to this theory promote a massive, leaderless movement of the working class intended to take control from those with public and private authority.

Modern anarchists directed their opposition against such pro-capitalist and quasi-governmental entities as the World Trade Organization, the world bank, and the international monetary fund. Anarchists became the focus of national attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s when they staged massive protests against World Trade Organization meetings in such U.S. cities as Seattle, Washington, and Eugene, Oregon. Although anarchists claim these protests were peaceful until law enforcement officers disrupted them, others consider these anarchists to be violent and unruly revolutionaries.

William Godwin (1756–1836) is widely regarded as the first to give anarchy a comprehensive intellectual foundation. Godwin, the son of a Calvinist minister, argued that the state and its laws were enslaving people instead of freeing them. According to Godwin, government was necessary only to prevent injustice and external invasion. With every person educated in sincerity, independence, self-restraint, and seriousness, any more governmental activity would be unnecessary.

Godwin opposed the rise of liberal democracy in the late 1700s. In the wake of the American and French Revolutions, he observed, "electioneering is a trade so despicably degrading, so eternally incompatible with moral and mental dignity that I can scarcely believe a truly great mind capable of the dirty drudgery of such vice." Godwin's observations and proposals were largely ignored during his lifetime, but they informed anarchists several decades later, when the brutal working conditions and "wage slavery" of industrialism began to present new reasons for revolt.

Two well-known anarchists, emma goldman (1869–1940) and Alexander Berkman (1870–1936), gained recognition in the 1890s. Goldman, the daughter of Jewish merchants, immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1885 at the age of 16. In Rochester, New York, Goldman worked in a sweat shop—a large, unsafe factory that paid low wages and demanded long hours. The experience radicalized Goldman, and with her natural flair for public speaking, she soon became a spokes-woman for anarchism. Goldman worked extensively for the industrial workers of the world (IWW), an organization dedicated to anarcho-syndicalism, which seeks to use the industrial union as the basis for a reorganization of society. Goldman's cross-country lecture tours, in which she addressed a broad range of social topics in German and English, earned her a reputation as a witty speaker and provocative thinker. A voracious reader and a magazine publisher, Goldman gave voice to ideas on sexuality, free love, birth control, and family structures that shocked members of her generation, including fellow anarchists.

Like many devout anarchists, Goldman had trouble with the law. She was imprisoned for a year for allegedly inciting a riot during a New York City hunger demonstration in 1893. Goldman also served a two-week sentence for distributing illegal birth control information. She was jailed on suspicion of complicity in the assassination of President william mckinley, in 1901. In 1917, she was arrested with Berkman for participating in antiwar protests, and both were charged with violating the Selective Service Act of 1917 (40 Stat. 76) by inducing young men to resist the draft. Goldman and Berkman were convicted, and, despite appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, both served prison terms. Upon release in 1919, they were deported to Russia.

Berkman, Goldman's ally, shared Goldman's passion for breaking social barriers and inspiring creative thought. He also possessed a violent streak. In 1892, he was arrested for attempting to assassinate steel magnate Henry Clay Frick during a steel strike. After serving a 14-year prison sentence, Berkman devoted the rest of his life to freeing imprisoned political radicals and promoting

workers' rights. He remained a close companion of Goldman until his death in 1936.

Goldman and Berkman cut dashing figures as romantic, intellectual anarchists, and they played no small part in a modest rise of anarchism in the early 1900s. Although anarchism still gains followers in colleges and universities and among self-styled intellectuals, it has been mostly dormant as a social force since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Many anarchists have suffered the bemusing fate of being convicted for breaking laws in which they do not believe. However, the justice system does occasionally protect the anarchist. In Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380, 47 S. Ct. 655, 71L. Ed. 1108 (1927), Harold B. Fiske was charged in Rice County, Kansas, with violating the Kansas Criminal Syndicalism Act (Laws Sp. Sess. 1920, c. 37). Fiske had been arrested for promoting the Workers' Industrial Union (WIU), an organization devoted in part to establishing worker control of industry and the abolition of the wage system.

Under the syndicalism statute in Kansas, any person advocating "the duty, necessity, propriety or expediency of crime, criminal syndicalism, or sabotage … is guilty of a felony" (1920 Kan. Sess. Laws ch. 37, § 3). Criminal syndicalism was defined as the advocation of crime, physical violence, or destruction of property "as a means of effecting industrial or political revolution, or for profit" (§ 1). Kansas authorities charged Fiske with criminal syndicalism, citing only the preamble to the constitution of the IWW, the parent organization of Fiske's WIU. This preamble stated, in part, that "a struggle must go on until the workers of the World organize as a class, take possession of the earth, and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system" (Fiske).

The U.S. Supreme Court found insufficient evidence against Fiske to warrant conviction of criminal syndicalism. According to the Court, there was no suggestion that "getting possession of the machinery of production and abolishing the wage system, was to be accomplished by other than lawful means." The Court confirmed that a state may enact legislation to protect its government from insurrection, but it may not be arbitrary or unreasonable in policing its citizens who advocate changes in the social order.

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Anarchism

Anarchism

Anarchism is a theory and way of life rooted in the belief that the individual should be free to pursue his or her own interests without coercion, especially by the state and its laws and institutions. The term is derived from the ancient Greek word anarkhia, meaning “no ruler,” and originally was used to denote a disruption of the normal civic order that often implied a condition of civil war. As with democracy and democrat, the words anarchy and anarchist were typically used as terms of abuse until the nineteenth century, when with the rise of commercial society and the decline of feudalism the idea of self-rule by “the people” became increasingly accepted.

The political theory of anarchism properly begins only with William Godwin (1756-1836) and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), though important elements of anarchist thought can be found in the ancient Greeks, among them Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435–c. 360 BCE) and the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium (c. 334-262 BCE). Strains of anarchist thought can also be found in the medieval era, in the Anabaptists of the Reformation, and in the Diggers of the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. However, Godwin is the first exponent of the philosophic doctrine of anarchism, though he does not use the term anarchist to describe himself; it is Proudhon who first calls himself an anarchist. In Proudhon’s What Is Property? (1840) he lays out a vision of socialism in which the individual is liberated from the shackles of capitalist property relations, and is instead free to reap the benefits of his labor under a form of communal production. Anarchism became increasingly relevant to the political world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, first through the writings of Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), who opposed the overly centralized socialism of Karl Marx (1818-1883), and later through Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) and Emma Goldman (1869-1940).

Anarchist thought is extremely diverse, but is generally characterized by opposition to the state, capitalism, and religion. Rather than seeing the legal apparatus of the state as a means of protecting individual freedom, anarchists contend that the state and its laws merely represent the self-serving interests of powerful groups in society. In this view, law is a means of oppressing the vast majority of the people, and the best way to eliminate this oppression is to do away with the institutions that create and reinforce it—especially the state and private property. Private property is a particular concern for anarchists, in that it corrupts the democratic process by controlling the inputs and outputs to the political system, and also because it directs people to think merely about their own self-interest rather than about how to cooperate with their fellow citizens. Because private property uses the state to benefit the members of the ruling class or elite, anarchists are not in favor of representative democracy as it is currently practiced.

Anarchists promote their goals by multiple means, including sometimes violent revolution, but also through democratic evolution and the creation of independent communal societies that function outside the domain of the state. In the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists (linked industrial worker-councils) formed an important element in the opposition to Francisco Franco’s fascist coup, and shared governmental authority with a socialist coalition, particularly in Barcelona. This experiment, though short-lived, provided an example of anarchist “government” in practice, and was characterized by the liquidation of the landed estates and the parceling of the land into agricultural cooperatives, the establishment of a federation of worker-controlled factories, and the elimination of the social indications of class status that had marked Bourbon Spain. Although defeated in the war, Spanish anarchism continues to be a model for other nations, because it is here that one of the largest worker-run cooperatives in the world, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, has been functioning for more than fifty years.

Among anarchists in the early part of the twenty-first century there are several prominent trends, some of which are substantially in tension with one another. Libertarian anarchists such as Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) defend capitalism, arguing that the protection of private property under capitalism provides the surest foundation for promoting individual liberty. Unlike most libertarians, Rothbard claims that even the most minimal state is an unnecessary evil, but this is almost the only thing that unites him with anarchist-socialists such as the protesters at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and G8 meetings in Seattle in 1999 and Geneva in 2001. Though not united by a systematic program, these protesters represented groups that are dissatisfied with the current system of neoliberal trade promoted by the WTO, which to them represents an extension of the rule of private property over the globe.

Anarchism is not highly visible in most developed western nations, but it remains a powerful underground current that both the Left and the Right continue to find useful as a stimulant to political thought and political action. Anarchism will continue to be relevant as long as the meaning of the terms democracy, property, and freedom is not self-evident.

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anarchism

anarchism An array of philosophical and political positions arguing that human societies function best without government or authority, and which suggest that the natural state of people is one of living together harmoniously and freely, without such intervention. Anarchy is said not to lead to chaos but to ‘spontaneous order’. The philosophy takes many forms and covers the whole political spectrum from extreme right to extreme left, the former seeking to diminish the influence of the state in order that free-market principles might prevail, the latter arguing that the state will wither away under true communism. Proponents of voluntary associations and mutual aid fall somewhere between. Good overviews of the theory of anarchism can be found in texts of that name by David Miller (1984) and Alan Ritter (1980).

In modern times, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's romantic claim that we are born free but then everywhere found in chains is one of the first statements of anarchism, whilst the first person to evolve a systematic theory of anarchism was the English rationalist William Godwin. During the nineteenth century, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (influenced in part by Godwin) developed a theory of anarchism that provided much of the basis for French syndicalism, arguing for the ideal of an ordered society of small units, functioning without central government, and organized instead on the federal principle of ‘mutualism’—or equitable exchange between self-governing associations of producers. Proudhon's disciple Mikhail Bakunin, in dispute with Karl Marx, favoured the destruction of state power and advocated violence to achieve this end. He too insists that the reconstruction of society has to be achieved from the bottom upwards by free associations or federations of workers. Like Proudhon, Bakunin maintained that all political parties were ‘varieties of absolutism’, and so was opposed to organized political action by a revolutionary vanguard on behalf of the proletariat. The extent to which anarchism challenges other political philosophies on the right and left alike is evident in Peter Kropotkin's observation that ‘Throughout the history of our civilisation, two traditions, two opposed tendencies have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition, the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition, the authoritarian and the libertarian tradition’ (Modern Science and Anarchism, 1912). Kropotkin, a Russian aristocrat, was himself an advocate of a ‘communist anarchism’ which was opposed to centralized mass production, and favoured instead an ideal of small communities in which industry and agriculture would be combined, and an education allowing each individual to develop to his or her full potential would be integral to the production process. Like most anarchists he tends to idealize primitive communities in his writings.

Anarchist influences are often evident in contemporary discussions of communes and communalism, ‘direct action’, workers' control, decentralization, and federalism. Anarchist philosophy and practice has also played a role (usually a minor one) in the trade-union movement, the Spanish Civil War, the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, the events of May 1968 in France, in Gandhian techniques of non-violent protest, and in much latter-day terrorism.

An interesting link with social ecology is made in the writings of the Canadian anarchist Murray Bookchin. After thirty years of political activism, beginning with the Spanish Civil War, Bookchin emerged in the 1960s as a distinctive voice within the radical ecological movement. His theories, usually described as part of the communitarian anarchist tradition, have been developed in twenty or so books, including Post Scarcity Anarchism (1971), Towards an Ecological Society (1980), The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship (1984), The Modern Crisis (2nd edn., 1987) and The Philosophy of Social Ecology (1990). Bookchin has also directed the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont, and been influential in the world-wide Green movement. His originality lies in his sweeping unification of radical politics with history, philosophy, and ecology.

Sociologists have largely ignored or been critical of anarchist philosophy, yet it harbours a whole tradition of social organization, and a systematic theory of how societies work. Although rarely acknowledged as such many of the writings of Michel Foucault, and even the theories of post-structuralism and post-modernism, might be seen as latter-day heir apparent to anarchist thought. Likewise, the work of many symbolic interactionists is largely compatible with the anarchist vision, since it harbours a view of society as spontaneous order.

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anarchism

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

anarchism (ăn´ərkĬzəm) [Gr.,=having no government], theory that equality and justice are to be sought through the abolition of the state and the substitution of free agreements between individuals. Central to anarchist thought is the belief that society is natural and that people are good but are corrupted by artificial institutions. Also central in anarchism are the belief in individual freedom and the denial of any authority, particularly that of the state, that hinders human development. Since the Industrial Revolution, anarchists have also opposed the concentration of economic power in business corporations.

Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoic philosophy, is regarded as the father of anarchism. In the Middle Ages the anarchist tradition was closely linked to utopian, millenarian religious movements such as the Brethren of the Free Spirit of the 13th cent. and the Anabaptists of the 16th cent. The philosophy of modern political anarchism was outlined in the 18th and 19th cent. by William Godwin, P. J. Proudhon, and others.

Mikhail Bakunin attempted to orient the First International toward anarchism but was defeated by Karl Marx. Bakunin gave modern anarchism a collectivist and violent tone that has persisted despite the revisionary efforts of Piotr Kropotkin and Leo Tolstoy. Political anarchism in Russia was suppressed by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution.

Anarchism's only real mass following was in Latin countries, where its doctrines were often combined with those of syndicalism, especially in Spain. In the United States, early anarchists such as Josiah Warren were associated with cooperatives and with utopian colonies. After the Haymarket riot in Chicago in 1886 and the assassination of President McKinley in 1901 a law was passed forbidding anarchists to enter the country, and Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were among those deported. The Sacco-Vanzetti Case attests to the fear of anarchism in the United States.

As an organized movement, anarchism is largely dead, but it retains importance as a philosophical attitude and a political tendency, and to lesser degree as a source of social protest. In recent years they have mounted highly visible, sometimes violent or destructive public protests at international conferences attended by representives of the governments and corporations of major industrialized nations, such as meetings of the Group of Seven, the World Trade Organization, and the World Economic Forum.

See R. Kedward, The Anarchists (1971); G. Runkle, Anarchism, Old and New (1972); M. Nettlau, History of Anarchism (3 vol., 1978).

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Anarchism

Encyclopedia of Russian History
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc.

ANARCHISM

Anarchism, derived from the Greek word meaning "without rule," rose to prominence in the nineteenth century and reached well into the twentieth century as a significant political force in Europe and Russia. Anarchists sought the overthrow of all forms of political rule in the name of a new society of voluntary federations of cooperative associations or syndicates. Anarchism also fought Marxism for revolutionary leadership.

Russian anarchism, in particular, inspired anarchist movements in Russia and Europe. Three Russians were progenitors of modern anarchism: Mikhail Alexsandrovich Bakunin (1814–1876), Petr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842–1921), and Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828–1910). The three, however, were contrasting personalities, each taking different slants on anarchist doctrine. Bakunin was ever the firebrand of revolutionary violence in word and deed; Kropotkin the philosophical and scientific propounder of a society based on cooperation and mutual aid; and Tolstoy the proponent of a Christ-inspired anarchism of nonviolence and nonresistance to evil in the sense of not answering another's evil with evil.

Despite the wide intellectual influence of Kropotkin and Tolstoy, Bakunin epitomized the strategy of violence to end all political power. Bakunin put the brand on anarchism as a doctrine of violence.

Kropotkin's followers objected to anarchist factions in Russia that turned to violence and terrorism as their characteristic mode of operation. Among the names they assumed were the Black Banner Bearers, Anarchist Underground, Syndicalists, Makhayevists (followers of Makhaysky), and the Makhnovists (followers of Makhno in the Ukraine).

In the wake of the 1917 revolution, Kropotkin returned to Russia from exile in Europe with high hopes for an anarchist future. Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks soon dashed them. His funeral in 1921 was the last occasion in which the black flag of anarchism was raised in public in Sovietized Russia. The new regime executed anarchist leaders and destroyed their organizations.

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anarchism

anarchism. Though mistrust of the state and a desire for cheap and limited government is a commonplace in the British political tradition, formal anarchism has received little support. Anarchist elements have been traced in the Commonwealth period, though they were more probably collective agrarianists, and the theory developed only after the French Revolution in the 1790s. Paine declared that government was, at best, a necessary evil: ‘a great part of what is called government is mere imposition.’ Spence and Godwin went further. Spence's vision of the future was of parish communities, with minimal powers reserved for the state, while Godwin insisted that government was a ‘brute engine’, which had caused all the vices of mankind. Neither had many disciples, though Shelley followed his father-in-law Godwin in calling government ‘a mighty calamity’. The Cato Street conspiracy to murder the cabinet in 1820, the work of some of Spence's supporters, gave anarchism a lurid image. The First International split in 1871 between the supporters of Marx, who wanted a proletarian state, and those of Bakunin who argued, with some prescience, that it might itself become an engine of despotism. The small British groups made little impact. Sheffield anarchists in 1891 produced a short-lived paper and a group of Walsall anarchists were convicted at Stafford assizes in 1892 of conspiring to manufacture bombs. An even more sensational episode was the siege of 100 Sidney Street, Stepney, in 1911, with two foreign anarchists holed up, while the home secretary, Winston Churchill, helped to supervise a shoot-out. Peter the Painter (otherwise Peter Piaktoff) escaped the flames and disappeared from history. There was some interest in anarchist theory among left-wing circles involved in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. But fear of anarchy, an important ingredient of the conservative tradition, was always in Britain more influential than anarchism itself.

J. A. Cannon

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anarchism

anarchism (Gk. ‘no government’) Political theory that regards the abolition of the state as a prerequisite for equality and social justice. In place of government, anarchy is a social form based upon voluntary cooperation between individuals. Zeno of Citium, leader of the Stoics, is regarded as the architect of anarchism. Millenarian movements of the Reformation, such as the Anabaptists, espoused a form of anarchism. As a modern political philosophy, anarchism dates from mid-19th century, and writers such as P. J. Proudhon. Often in conflict with emerging communism, Mikhail Bakunin's brand of violent, revolutionary anarchism led to his expulsion from the First International (1872). Anarchism has been a popular political force only in conjunction with syndicalism. Its support of civil disobedience and sometimes political violence has led to its marginalization. Following the assassination (1901) of President William McKinley, the USA has barred anarchists from its shores. The Sacco and Vanzetti Case (1920) led to further hysteria over the threat of anarchism.

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anarchism

an·ar·chism
/ ˈanərˌkizəm/
•
n.
belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion. ∎
anarchists as a political force or movement:
socialism and anarchism emerged to offer organized protest against the injustices of Spanish society.

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anarchist

an·ar·chist
/ ˈanərkist/
•
n.
a person who believes in or tries to bring about anarchy.
•
adj.
relating to or supporting anarchy or anarchists:
an anarchist newspaper.DERIVATIVES:an·ar·chis·tic
/ ˌanərˈkistik/ adj.

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Modern Language Association

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American Psychological Association

Notes:

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.